Spatial effects and party nationalization: The Geography of partisan support in Mexico

Abstract

Link to publicationCitation for published version (APA): Harbers, I. (2017). Spatial effects and party nationalization: The geography of partisan support in Mexico. Electoral Studies, 47, 55-66. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.electstud.2016.11.016 General rightsIt is not permitted to download or to forward/distribute the text or part of it without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), other than for strictly personal, individual use, unless the work is under an open content license (like Creative Commons). Disclaimer/Complaints regulationsIf you believe that digital publication of certain material infringes any of your rights or (privacy) interests, please let the Library know, stating your reasons. In case of a legitimate complaint, the Library will make the material inaccessible and/or remove it from the website. Please Ask the Library: http://uba.uva.nl/en/contact, or a letter to: Library of the University of Amsterdam, Secretariat, Singel 425, 1012 WP Amsterdam, The Netherlands. You will be contacted as soon as possible. a b s t r a c t Nationalization captures the degree to which parties receive similar vote shares throughout the national territory, and is therefore explicitly interested in spatial aspects of party competition. This paper draws on spatial econometrics to analyze how parties compete across space. On the basis of a geo-referenced dataset of support for three major Mexican parties during the 2012 election, the analysis examines why there are spatial patterns of party support beyond what would be expected on the basis of district composition. The paper shows that spatial context has an independent effect on cross-district party performance, and that party support in one district increases the likelihood of party support nearby, thus highlighting why more explicit attention to space is important to understand the origins of nationalization.

Pre-election violence and territorial control: Political dominance and subnational election violence in polarized African electoral systems

“…In fact, regionalism is a striking feature for much of the developing world where low spatial integration, lack of infrastructure, spatial inequality, local grievances, and ethnic segregation have created distinct local market places. Regional variations in voting remain strong in countries as different as Mexico (Harbers, 2017), India (Chhibber & Verma, 2018), and the Ukraine (Barrington & Herron, 2004).…”

Measuring and theorizing regional governance

“…Competition or convergence may generate diffusion, but in either case, the assumption of unit independence is violated. Using geo-coded electoral support data for the 2012 election in Mexico, Harbers demonstrates that party support in one district increases the likelihood of party support in a nearby district, thus highlighting the importance of location in the dynamics of party nationalization (Harbers, 2017). Diffusion is an implicit recurrent theme in Volume II and comes into play given our finding that demand for self-rule on the part of a minority community affects the society as a whole.…”

Incorporating Space in Multimethod Research: Combining Spatial Analysis with Case-Study Research

“…Although conceiving of units as principally independent or interdependent implies a different conceptualization of the causal process, most social science outcomes are likely due to a combination of unit-specific (aspatial) and contextual (spatial) variables (Cho 2003). Therefore, rather than conceiving of these two approaches as competing and mutually exclusive, for many research questions it is more productive to view them as complementary (Harbers 2017). The central point is that in many social science analyses-especially in those in which relevant units are political jurisdictions-unit independence should not be assumed but instead explored empirically.…”

“…3. For a more in-depth discussion of how multimethod research may be leveraged to understand the spatial process, see Harbers andIngram 2017a and2017b. 4.…”